If there’s anything that I learned in all those years of Social Science education, it’s that forecasting is a sucker’s game.
I don’t know where I’ll be, but I hope it’s someplace I never saw coming. #embracethechaos.
PROMPT: 10 Years
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Category Archives: Philosophy
PROMPT: Everyday Things
My wife, movement, new & interesting ideas, play, and epiphanies.
[I’m presuming we’re using the word “thing” in the broadest possible sense — as a stand in for any noun. If it is meant in the narrower common usage of trinkets, gewgaws, baubles, and tchotchkes, then I’ve got nothing.]
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PROMPT: High School
A psychology teacher taught us about what he called “the gestalt of expectations.” It’s when one builds an alternative reality in one’s mind (typically a worst-case scenario) and then one acts as though it is a reality, when – in fact – it is not. (Though sometimes it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy situation, which — of course — triggers selection bias in people of the unexamined life.)
It was my introduction to what I would come to know as the most fundamental insight of human existence — i.e. that one’s experience of the world is not the world itself, and while one has minimal influence over the latter, one can have tremendous influence over the former. One can even train oneself to perceive difficulties and sorrows as learning and growth opportunities.
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PROMPT: Positive Change
Daily practice of feeling gratitude. (As opposed to being grateful that one November day a year and wallowing in how horrible everything is the other three-sixty-four.)
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PROMPT: Character
Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
Wu Song (武松) from Water Margin (水浒传.)
Because he’s a traveler with zero f#&ks to give. There is no more freedom to be had than that.
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PROMPT: Community
That’s a tough one because while I see value in communities, I’m also concerned that there is a rising trend toward tribalism and nationalism that will not be good for anyone — not to mention a shift toward virtual communities where anonymity and disconnect lead to people to act as though they were raised by hyenas. (I do know that, in reality, that’s an insult to the marvelous hyena, but I think it makes a sort of point for the non-hyena expert.)
I’ve been amazed at how India manages to have an intense sense of community in such a vastly super-tribal environment. (I’m using “supertribe” in Desmond Morris’s sense — i.e. a community which is too big for everyone to know everyone else, and which has a group dynamic that reflects that fact.) But it’s not as though there isn’t a dark side to this intensity of community — patriarchy, sectarian conflict, disempowered societal segments, etc.
America, by comparison seems to be experiencing a dearth of true community, which is driving people toward virtual “communities,” and in virtual communities people seem to fall into the shittiest versions of themselves. Not to mention the lack of community’s contribution to what I’ve heard called a “mental health crisis.”
I guess my preferences would be that community be: 1.) real and not virtual. 2.) that it exploit the advantages of diverse membership instead of wallowing in homogeneity and group think. 3.) that it doesn’t create overclasses and underclasses. And that, 4.) Community norms minimally negate individual freedoms.
That said, I’m not at all sure that the above criteria can be reconciled. Maybe the tradeoffs are too strong. Maybe – in our super-tribal world – the closest-knit society will always be the most xenophobic [fearful / disliking of outsiders,] and maybe tolerance and egalitarianism will always be accompanied by societal degradation. I have observed a strong inclination for people to think of compassion as a zero-sum game.
As I said, a tough one.
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“Once there came a man” by Stephen Crane [w/ Audio]
Once there came a man
Who said:
"Range me all men of the world in rows."
And instantly
There was a terrific clamor among the
people
Against being ranged in rows.
There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.
It endured for ages;
And blood was shed
By those who would not stand in rows,
And by those who pined to stand in rows.
Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.
And those who stayed in the bloody scuffle
Knew not the great simplicity.
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Five Wise Lines from George Carlin [April 2025]
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot,
and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant
like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?
I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country,
no matter how tough it is,
that Americans,
when they roll up their sleeves,
can’t completely ignore.
Here’s all you have to know about men and women;
women are crazy,
men are stupid.
And the main reason that women are crazy
is that men are stupid.
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete.
It’s so fuckin’ heroic.
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BOOKS: “Be Funny or Die” by Joel Morris
Be Funny or Die: How Comedy Works and Why It Matters by Joel MorrisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Author Site
Release date: Sept 4, 2025 [paperback, hardcover is already out]
This is a comedy writer’s guide to how humor is crafted. It’s a bit popular psychology and a bit of a how-to guide. If one is expecting, because it’s on comedy and humor, a book that is a laugh riot on every page, this isn’t the book for you. That’s not so say Morris doesn’t pepper the book with witty commentary and humorous examples, but it’s ultimately a book about how the sausage gets made and is, thus, somewhat analytic — if in a readable style.
At the core of Morris’s theory of comedy is a three-component structure: construct, confirm, and confound. Other major ideas are the fundamental tribalism of comedy and the connections between comedy and music. It wouldn’t be a present-day book on comedy if there wasn’t some discussion of the idea of offense and the “limits” of what can be said.
I can’t say all of Morris’s ideas found immediate resonance with me, but even when I didn’t fully buy the argument, I did find the presentation thought-provoking. For example, I don’t know that I buy Morris’s argument about the importance of tribality to comedy. I do agree that one needs a common language and some overlap of experience, but all of humanity has a domain of overlap of experience. Yes, one may have an easier time the more extensive that overlap is, but ease doesn’t necessarily mean one can’t get big laughs from an audience whose worldviews and experience are radically different from one’s own. [Of course, I may just be being overly sensitive as a traveler in a tribal world.]
For writers, the end of the book has a few chapters that are more about story than comedy – per se, and – while these chapters compare and contrast comedy and drama writing – they provide information useful to any writer engaged in storytelling.
I’d highly recommend this book for any readers interested in comedy writing, be it of standup material, scripts, or other content.
View all my reviews
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PROMPT: Secret Skill
Mind control. I can control my mind with my mind.
[NOTE: I’m not sure what “secret” has to do with it. Anything one blabs across the internet is — by definition — not a secret. Though the skill I mention takes place in a purely subjective realm, so — in that sense — might remain unknown to the general public.]
Tiger Riding for Beginners 